Contrary to its common framing as a life-affirming achievement, the experience of birth is often full of tension, uncertainty, distress and disappointment. Many people walk away feeling bad – feeling harmed.

Eschewing the abstractions that have come to dominate the current literature on obstetric violence, Bad Feelings approaches the matter of harm from the feelings themselves. The book frames feelings as analytic resources that can be used to interpret, read, and theorise the various forms of harm – e.g. trauma, violence, moral injury, or racism – that manifest during birth. Building on contemporary feminist philosophical work that has highlighted the importance of excavating the 'grey zones' that surround violence, consent, and harm in relation to sex, Chadwick expands this conversation to the realm of birth, arguing that staying close to feelings can open new ways of thinking about harm, violence, and the politics of discontent.

In this, the book draws on feelings that are muted and tentative (rather than loud and sure) as a way of exploring quiet and uncertain forms of harm. Developing an approach Chadwick calls 'feeling as method', the book works with an archive of birth stories (from Europe, the US and the Global South), feminist autobiographical writing on birth, and the author's own personal and embodied experiences, to explore the tones, textures, and phenomenologies of birthing harm.